I ask because I have an opportunity to shadow a Homeopathic M.D. Would it be considered as good as, say, shadowing a radiologist? Or is it frowned upon by the medical school app reviewers?
If its not accepted by medical schools as true experience, or if the politics between those for it and against or whatever will get in the way, it might be better that I dont waste my time.
I'm a little freaked out about homeopathy at the moment. My fiance's family is really into it, and they all go to a homeopathic MD/DO (the dual degree seemed odd to me in the first place). When I was injured last summer, his mom gave me a "remedy" that I was supposed to take daily. I forgot about it, but when I healed quickly, she was thrilled that it "worked." I didn't correct her. I just forgot to take it...I figured it was harmless.
I'm a pharmacology major, and we spend more time on toxicology than any medical program would bother to spend, since med schools and other clinical programs can teach what they need to teach about this in a quick lecture. Our program is rooted in biochemistry and cell biology. Instead of learning how to prescribe, we learn how drugs work at a molecular level, and how they affect receptors and mediate different pathways. Our toxicology professor discussed the real dangers of herbal "remedies" whose effects are not well-known. A few, including aristolochic acid (found in many herbal preparations) have recently been characterized as dangerous enough that legislation is being pushed (as recently as February 2010) to have the FDA regulate them.
It's interesting to me, because I've always been uncomfortable with putting patients on complicated drug regimens unnecessarily. I'd love to see people lose weight, exercise, quit smoking, and only take Lipitor if they
truly have a genetic LDL-receptor defect that makes it impossible to lower their cholesterol levels. But as the saying goes, it's better to choose a poison you know rather than one you don't.
I figured they were innocuous and unnecessarily costly, but it sounds like they may be more harmful than previously thought. It may not look good if serious research breakthroughs are made that prove homeopathy dangerous (instead of just "silly" in the minds of health care professionals) in the time that you're shadowing a homeopathic doctor, regardless of his/her qualifications. I probably would have answered differently a year (or even a month) ago. Just a thought.
